Pirate Bay releases map of Pirates

Pirate Bay the King of BitTorrent piracy websites has recently released a Google powered map that charts the locations of Pirates around the world. Which is based on the origin of the tracker that a person uses when downloading items from Pirate Bay states Torrent Freak.

At the time of writing this post I wanted to see how many Papua New Guinean users were downloading items from Pirate Bay. I was amazed to find out that their was 14 users per minute at 9:50pm tonight (9th Feb 2009) downloading items from Pirate Bay, or 0.001% of Pirate Bay users at this time were from Papua New Guinea. I pebble in the ocean. When you compare the figures of people who live in Papua New Guinea with other countries.

The interesting thing to notes was that the country where the most users came from was China which you would expect it to be. With 33% of Pirate Bay users coming from China, around 7 million users. The interesting part about it is that Pirate Bay is banned in China. So I guess where there is a will there is a way.

The statistics is now based on unique users connected per minute! Keep in mind that a torrent client usually only connects to the tracker once every 15-20 minutes. Total unique users per minute : 1343613 (at the time of writing this post)

Quotas of the week from the Sunday Chronicle

Published in the Sunday Chronicle on 18th January 2009

Quotas of the week

NCD Metropolitan Superintendent Fred Yakasa speaking at the first quarterly parade for his command at the Boroko police station:

"Policing must not be just a job to make ends meet but a profession that requires personal motivation, a high level of enthusiasm, dedication and commitment...."

Superintendent Yakasa, inviting his charges to a reception at Bluff Inn outside the Port Moresby city, after the parade:

"Papua New Guinea will not collapse. We will just have two to three hours to get together and enjoy ourselves."

Housing Minister Andrew Kumbakor hitting back at criticism from National Housing Commission board chairman and former chief executives:

"Mr. Maru, Mr. Dambali, and Mr. Asukusa have done nothing for PNG."

Ron Seddon of Rotary Against Malaria when accepting a donation from tobacco company BAT this week:

"Our long term aim is for malaria without mortality"

POMSoX update 8th Jan 2009

Information Provided by BSP Capital:

The local bourse on Thursday experienced yet another relatively calm day with most of the stocks trading light volumes. BSP lost 1 percent maintaining its position within the range of K0.97-0.99, while CCP ended the day at K2.50. IOL continued its upward trend gaining 2 percent on the AMEX to US$17.40 with a reasonable volume.

In the opening phase of the market today bids for BSP are lined up at K0.98 and NBO buyers are as high as K9.50.

MOVERS:

Thursday’s movers on the bourse 08/01/09:

BSP: -1.01%

CCP: 0.40%


Note: Click on image to enlarge

Credit & Data Bureau company starts up

Credit & Data Bureau (CDB) is a new company that is being launched in Papua New Guinea to store information about Papua New Guinean's and anyone else that borrows money from financial institutions in Papua New Guinea that are customers of this company. The company has a number of different shareholders that include the three main commercial banks in Papua New Guinea (BSP, ANZ, & Westpac), they also have a number of foreign shareholders.

According to the CDB's website their principal business is the operation of a Credit Bureau database, where CBS's clients can access the credit history and identify details of their customers. CDB states that they supply their customers with information from their customers and also their public records.

So what this basically means is that CDB is going to host a online database that sits on a server overseas and is run by a foreign company in a foreign land. Now this company is going to be trusted to hold all the important data information and personal details of Papua New Guinean's. I don't like the idea of a foreign company in a foreign land being in charge of Papua New Guinean's personal data and information.

The other interesting point that came to light is that only a select few financial institutions in Papua New Guinea are shareholders. The rest have not being invited to become shareholders. Yet CDB's is expecting financial institutions that join to give their bad debts data over to CDB's for free. If I was a CEO, Lending Manager, etc for a financial institution in Papua New Guinea. I would not give this data over to CDB for free. The financial gain that CDB stands to make from this is huge. For example to become a client/member of CDB costs K20,000. Then you have licencing fee that you have to pay every year which is another couple of thousand kina. On top of that you have to pay a fee for every search that you make. Which depending on the volume of searches that you make starts at K8. So you can see already that CDB is going to be a cash cow. So why not sell you data to CDB instead of giving it to them for free.

Papua New Guinean's and foreigners who have bad debts a like should be very worried. Because the good thing about CDB is it is going to prevent these people from getting loans from a number of different financial institutions. But there also can be some problems like all systems where there is cases of mistaken identity and people who are good at paying their debts are put on the system as having a bad debt.

I think the concept behind CDB is great. It is working in Fiji where this companies sister company has being run for the last six years. But I feel that all financial institutions in Papua New Guinea should be allowed to become shareholders. At the moment CDB seems to be credit data beureau that it run by a number foreigners in Papua New Guinea. They do have a very respectable long time resident of Papua New Guinea as being their Managing Director (Retired Principal of Ela Murry International School). But it still does not change the fact that this is company that is going to hold Papua New Guinean's financial data and is owned and run by people from overseas. I for one would like to see more Papua New Guinea shareholders in such a Bureau or better yet the Papua New Guinea Government should create its own credit bureau.

Google releases list of 10 fastest rising queries for 2008

With 2008 fast drawing to a close Google has released its Zeitgeist list, the tool which shows what internet users are searching for. The top 10 fastest rising global queries for 2008 are:

• Sarah Palin
• Beijing 2008
• Facebook login
• Tuenti
• Heath Ledger
• Obama
• Nasza Klasa
• Wer Kennt Wen
• Euro 2008
• Jonas Brothers

Unfortunately there was no country specific information on this Zeitgeist list about Papua New Guinea, may be next year?

The 10 most Pirate TV Shows on BitTorrent

According to TorrentFreak television "shows are by far the most wanted files on BitTorrent". Last week the 10 most Pirate TV Shows were:

1. Heroes
2. Prison Break
3. Dexter
4. House
5. Desperate Housewives
6. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
7. Fringe
8. Top Gear
9. Stargate Atlantis
10. The Simpsons

Currently with the limited amount of broadband users with in Papua New Guinea and the cost of having an internet connection is preventing large scale pirating of TV shows in PNG. But as the network infrastructure improves and bandwidth and internet cost go down. Piracy in Papua New Guinea is going to be a bigger problem then it already is. Major local music companies like CHM may be fighting an up hill battle when the internet technology in Papua New Guinea improves.

Port Moresby Internation Airport to Small

On Monday afternoon when arriving back to Port Moresby from Brisbane on Virgin Pacific Blue. I was horrified to see the long line of people waiting to pass through immigration. Between 12:30pm and 1:30pm four flights from overseas destination arrived. To put it simply the international airports arrival lounge could not handle the amount of passengers that arrived. After waiting in a long line for almost an hour there was further delay because the one baggage conveyer belt in the terminal could not handle the amount of bags coming through. To be honest wantoks with the increase in the amount of international flights coming in and out of Papua New Guinea the International Terminal in Port Moresby needs to be made bigger.

Australian Governent is planning to install ISP filtering

It is scary to think that the Australia Federal Government under Kevin Rudd is planning to install internet filtering at the ISP level. According to the Getup website:

"The Federal Government is planning to force all Australian servers to filter internet traffic and block any material the Government deems ‘inappropriate’. Under the plan, the Government can add any ‘unwanted’ site to a secret blacklist."

What Kevin Rudd's government is trying to install is the type of internet censorship that happens in China. Where a Government chooses what is appropriate to view and what is inappropriate to view. Then it is only a small step away from getting to the stage where if the Government does not like what is being said about it, the government will just filter it away. Removing an individuals right to freedom of information and people's civil liberties.

According to the nocleanfeed website:

This plan will waste tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and slow down Internet access. Despite being almost universally condemned by the public, ISPs, State Governments, Media and censorship experts

APC states that the top 5 reasons why this plan should not go a head are:

1. It will slow everything down (meaning that recent trials showed that by using Kevin Rudd's ISP filtering technology it was 30% slower to view sites etc then it was with out Rudd's technology.
2. Offensive is in the eyes of the beholder
3. It pressumes families care about this stuff
4. It makes Australia look stupid on a global scale
5. The people supporting it don't like mounting rational arguments (for example why not make the blacklist public and debate on what should be on it or not on it)

The reason why I find what Kevin Rudd and the Australian government is doing scary is because in recent times in Papua New Guinea we have seen members of the National Parliament trying to dictate to the Papua New Guinean media what it can say and can not say. A good example of this is what our PNG Finance Minister did to Post Courier at the 2009 National Budget lockup. Where reporters from Post Courier were locked out of the budget which according to Post Courier was to teach them a lesson because they had printed something that he did not like. Now if the PNG Government was to install laws like what the Australia Government is doing I fear that this technology would be used for Government propaganda in Papua New Guinea, to filter out anything from the press that the Government did not like.

Should Papua New Guinean's be scared of what is happening in Australia? I really think we should. The PNG Government may follow the Australian Government's lead and use this technology to regulate the media in Papua New Guinea.

Are Papua New Guinea newspapers dying?

I was reading an interesting post by Erick Schonfield about the declining advertising in the Newspaper industry in the United States. Basically what was said was:

"Print advertising has been declining for ten straight quarters, but this marks only the second quarter that online advertising also went down. More concerning is that the overall rate of decline seems to be accelerating"

Based on these comments and statistics from the Newspaper Association of America I began to wounder is the newspaper industry in Papua New Guinea eventually going to die out because of the web? I for one believe not in the near future. The main reason being that there is a huge gap in the digital divide between developed nations like the United States and developing countries like my beloved home Papua New Guinea. My argument is best summed up in the words of a fellow Papua New Guinean Jeremy Ningiga in his Knol article on the digital divide:

"Currently ICT is making the gap worse in developing nations like P.N.G. The reason being is that until ITC becomes an affordable or free commodity for the nation’s poor the gap will continue to get worse. For example in P.N.G a minimum wage earner who earns 66.68 Kina (K) per week as stated on the Investment Promotion Authority of P.N.G (2007) website. When converted to the Australian dollar is $26.00 a week at an exchange rate of 1.00 Kina to $0.39 at per the Bank of South Pacific website exchange rates (2007). Now if you take in to consideration that standard dial up plan with a local ISP Daltron Ltd costs K45.00 for 10hours. It is not feasible for a minimum wage earner in a developing country to use the Internet let alone buy a computer, once you take living expense in to account."

Although the exchange rates used in the above article are out of date now. The general sentiment of the article is still the same. In Papua New Guinea currently not everyone can gain access to the web. To read up to the minute news articles, Blogs, Knols, etc. Until such time that this is possible all of our Papua New Guinean published newspapers are safe, from the web taking their ad revenue to the extent that it is not economically viable to run and print newspapers in Papua New Guinea. So the answer to the question "Are Papua New Guinea newspapers dying?" Not for now or the near future for that matter. I don't think they have to worry to much about the web stealing their thunder just yet.

Here is some food for thought, will the day come when online ad revenue in Papua New Guinea is large enough for a person to sustain his or herself financially, and to make a comfortable living from something like blogging about Papua New Guinea or Papua New Guinean issues? Who knows, only time will tell.

Playing for change - music created by people around the world

While surfing the web tonight I came across a great music clip that inspired me so I wanted to share it with my wantoks. The song in the video clip is Stand By Me and it is played by different people from all around the world. The Playing for change foundation is making a documentary about the filming and recording of different songs around the world in areas where the foundation provides support.



What the Playing for change foundation is "dedicated to connection the world through music by providing resources (including but not limited to facilities, supplies, and educational programs) to musicians and their communities around the world."

Have a look at the clip and if you are interested in finding out more about the people and foundation behind this video go to www.playingforchange.org May be there might even be a chance for communities around Papua New Guinea to benefit from this foundations work. I reckon it would be great to see a couple of Papua New Guinean wantoks dressed up in traditional gear belting out a few all time greats like Stand By Me. Below are a couple of other Playing for change music videos that were recorded while people from the foundation were doing providing assistance to communities in need.

Skype - free calls from Papua New Guinea

Since the start of November 2008 I have being able to make free calls to Australia land line telepones and 29 other countries through Skype. Currently Skype is running a promotion where for the next 30 days you will be able to make free calls to a number of selected countries around the world. When I say free I am not taking into account the megabytes that are used for the calls. So there is some cost by it is an ISP that is making money instead of say Telikom or Digicel.

I personally have being using Skype for well over 2 years now to ring friends and family overseas which uses VoIP. I have found that this has dramatically decreased my phone bill. For example if you were to ring from your Digicel mobile in Papua New Guinea to a telephone land line in Australia it would cost you 99 toea per minute using Digicel. Normally when there are no Skype promotions on and you are ringing from Papua New Guine to Australia it would cost almost 3 australian cents. Which when converted at todays exchange rate of around 0.54 Aus$ to 1Kina it would cost you all most 6 toea per minute to call an Australian land line. You don't have to be a Uinversity of PNG accounting student to work out that you are saving 93 toea per minute by using Skype.

There is a large potential business use for this technology in Papua New Guinea. For starters companies can use Skype to call overseas to reduce their phone bills. They can also set up overseas numbers that are linked to there Skype account so when people from overseas want to call them they can dial a local number in the country that they are in, so that the call cost will be for a local call instead of an international call. Better yet people can do Skype to Skype calls so it will only cost you the megabytes that you are using. You can also do video conferences, instant messaging, send text messages to mobile phones, transfer files, etc.

Only real draw back of using Skype in PNG for the wantok on the street apart from an internet connection would be the ability to have access to a credit card. But now with the introduction of Bank of South Pacific's Visa debt card it would make it more viable for wantok's to pay for top ups of their Skype accounts.

I know as a fact that some of the large mining companies in Papua New Guinea are already using Skype to communicate. For example one of the mines that has a very remote site uses Skype to communicate the weather details so that helicopters that fly in and out of their site are aware of the weather forecasts in the area.

Microsoft launches online store in USA

Yesterday Microsoft (MS) launched its USA online store. Where people can buy MS products online and download it. In other words the death of packaged software has began.

What the store is offering is for consumers to purchase MS products like MS Office, Vista, etc, then download the product. Thus reducing the delivery time.

This sounds great but it will only benefit people that have broadband connections. For the majority of Papua New Guinean home internet users that have dial up access. The idea of having to download large software packages is ridiculous. When you take into account that ISP's like Daltron Ltd offer 56kb dial up connections (in reality it is more like 28kb or even less, don't let their advert's fool you!).

The death of the package software may have began with MS opening online stores to sell their products. But for developing nations like Papua New Guinea such steps like this will only make the digital divide even greater.

Google release's video chatting from with in Gmail

Google's official blog has announced the release of video chatting capabilities from with in Gmail. What does this mean for Papua New Guinean's not a lot if you have a small dial up connection. But for those Papua New Guinea's that have services like Telikom's ADSL broadband. It means that if you have a Gmail account after downloading a plug in you will be able to have video chats using your Gmail account. Instead of having to open a third party software like Skype, etc.

Free software to convert DVD's for Portable Players

Back in the old days Port Moresby use to have Video rental stores. These were the days when VHS Tapes ruled the home entertainment industry and you could get a 285ml bottle of Coke for 25 toea. Fast forward 25 years when all the VHS Tapes are now paper weights or dust collectors and a 375ml can of Coke will set you back Two Kina.

With the death of VHS video came the dawn of the new era of the DVD. The problem was that all the movie rental stores died with the VHS video in Papua New Guinea. Now a days when you want to watch a new release you have to buy the movie on DVD. Mind you most of the time you can watch what is in the cinemas around the world on DVD in PNG. Due to this problem it has lead to me have a large collection of DVD movies.

To cut a long story short if you want to be able to transfer your DVD's to a portable player like an iPod you need a software. Instead of going out and spending a couple of hundred Kina at Daltron or Datec etc. I suggest you try using Handbrake.

Handbrake is freeware open source program. Which I have found to be extremely powerful to use when converting DVD's to be played on my iPod. It also can be used to convert DVD's to other portable players like PS3, Quick Time, Television, Apple TV, etc. So if you want to save a couple of bucks and get a great product try out Handbrake.

Handbrake works on Windows, MAC Leopard, & Linux. It is only a couple of megabytes to download by this I mean the biggest download for Handbrake is the MAC download. All the others are smaller then the 5.2Mb download for the MAC. So taking in to account the small bandwidth dial up connection that most Papua New Guinea household's have it is still possible to download Handbrake.

Handbrake

Simple way to start programing

Microsoft has recently launched a program called Small Basic which is aimed at teaching children how to program. The software is 4.06 Mb in size so it is small enough for the typical Papua New Guinean dial up internet connection to download. Small Basic is based on .Net and inspired by the Basic programing language. Even thought Small Basics is aimed at children it can be a great way for an adult to learn how to program.

Small Basic is made up of three parts: Language, Environment, and Libraries. The Language is made up of only 14 Keywords, it comes with a simple programing environment, and its own libraries. Which you have the option to create new libraries or modify existing ones. Small Basic also allows third party libraries to be plugged in.

Requirements to run Small Basic is a Windows XP or Vista operating system and .NET 3.5 Framework.

What does this mean for the people of Papua New Guinea. Basically it gives any Person in PNG the opportunity to learn how to program with out having to attend expensive courses. It must also be noted that this is not a open source software.

Text messages can help the fight against AIDS in Papua New Guinea

Over the last couple of weeks I have taken a keen interest in reading up on articles of how HIV AIDS is being fought in African countries using Technology. An article that was of particular interest to me was the use of text messages to remind AIDS infected people to attend appointments at clinics. The reason why this article was interesting is that it is using a "Please call me" service similar to the one that Digicel PNG is offering.

How it works is quite simple a medical clinic sends a text message to a patient using the "Please call me" service to remind a person to contact the clinic.

To implement such a system here in Papua New Guinea would be quite simple considering that Digicel all ready offers the free "Please call me" service. It would just be a matter of clinics obtaining a Digicel mobile phone. There would also be a number of other steps that would need to be taken like obtaining a list of patients mobile numbers. A major limitation would be that since the "Please call me" service is only offered on the Digicel network it would only work on Digicel phones.